I love that he speaks and thinks faster in his second language than I do in my first. Great lecture.

I'm Russian and I can understand everything he is saying. Stop the hate and ad hominem attacks.

Piketty is one of the finest economists of the 21st century so far, author of a book that has totally changed our view of economics, and all the comments can do is complain about the accent...

You people trashing his accent should go read his book. Or maybe you could go and try to learn French and see how difficult it is for a native English speaker; which would of course show you how difficult it must be the other way round. By the way, I have Portuguese as a native language and I can undersand every word he says. More than that: I focus in WHAT HE SAYS, and it is such a powerful message.

Fellas, it's really not that hard to turn on the subtitles.

His work is not to find solutions, he made a big analysis about inequality, capital and growth than nobody did before, and that's already a huge step.

His accent is perfect; it makes you concentrate more on what he says. And it's very important indeed.

_"We need global financial transparency"_ We do. But I doubt those who have the most wealth want it.

That is a lot of research, dedication and hard work he did. The data is a matter of interpretation, application and real world effects. Interesting but many will attack it out of fear of socialist concepts.

Piketty's work is extraordinary. His analysis is strictly economic and in addition to being rigorous, it shows the need to interpret the economy as Marx or Webber did, taking into account the political and social variables. For example, understanding the equivalence between money and power can have a much clearer perspective on how this excessive growth of large capitalists, even above national economies, can lead to the end of democracy and to eradicate any counterweight.

Watched your movie "Capital in the 21st century" yesterday. Great job! I wish the politicians listen to you.. quick!!

Excellent Ted-talk. Piketty is amazing

00:29 - r > g 14:33 - 16:00 -

I found it hard not to stop the video at the beginning and couple of times in the middle but I'm glad I watched it through now. He made some strong points and has some great ideas. A fair economy is good for all of us, think of what could happen if we could redistribute wealth...

i cant see a single comment complaining about his accent but a bunch of simps who are making up this issue

Great guy & I have no problem with his accent.

I don't know why so many complain about his accent. It's understandable and it's very amusing to listen to.

r>g describes at most a sub-process of the concentration tendency of capital. The problem is rather that through mechanization more and more workers fall out of the production process and thus can no longer consume. This almost appears as a class struggle between states, because the Italians and Spaniards soon cannot afford a Volkswagen. New technologies are creating new jobs, but they cannot be performed by the old workers. No assembly line worker suddenly becomes a computer scientist. The question is also when the point will come when the service sectors will no longer be able to absorb the dismantling of the production sectors. And as I said, these are also regional issues. Many parts of the world are already completely cut off, while in others the middle class is breaking away and technology is migrating. The problem is not r>g, but falling profits, as more capital is spent on machinery, less on workers. Only workers generate profit in the long run (unpaid work) - after all secondary effects, like profits of one single company through better technologies, which are declining, when others get the same machinery, are seen as individual competetive benefits. The capital is raised by start-ups on the stock market, and they have now understood how unprofitable the real economy is and are pushing companies like Nikola, which didn't even produce a single electric truck, over Ford. Simulating profit expectations and selling off stocks before the crash, then investing in the real estate bubble again etc. pp.: thats the game. The question is also, where do we actually want to grow to? We could take away world hunger, offer everyone public transport and leisure activities. In Germany an unemployed person lives like a king hundreds of years ago. Billionaires buy yachts and private jets, which is ultimately the height of perversion. Prosperity grew rapidly, inequality remained, leading to absurd ownership constellations. Work and production has become an end in itself. Piketty reduces the problem to the question of distribution of wealth, but the real question and contradiction begins in the production. One solution is seen in the taxation of the work of robots in order to finance the "tittytainment" (Brzeziński), which actually only shows how deadlocked people are on the distribution issue. Piketty didnt solved anything. He cements the problem

*When the rate of return on capital significantly exceeds the growth rate of the economy (as it did through much of history until the nineteenth century and as is likely to be the case again in the twenty-first century), then it logically follows that inherited wealth grows faster than output and income. * It is almost inevitable that inherited wealth will dominate wealth amassed from a lifetime’s labor by a wide margin, and the concentration of capital will attain extremely high levels-levels potentially incompatible with the meritocratic values and principles of social justice fundamental to modern democratic societies.

I am Irish, I don’t know any French. I really enjoyed this presentation and understood every word clearly, in fact I probably enjoyed it all the more because of the cool accent. Bottom line, if you had difficulty understanding this presentation, it is because you have difficulty understanding English.

amazing! Thanks for your efforts prof.

Being a foreigner I was happy to understand Pikkety’s speech much better than most speeches I’ve been hearing from native English speakers, many of them dumping bells, whistles and linguistic artifacts over the audience. Regarding content, his comprehensive work and correspondingly very synthesized outcome, in my view, are of huge value as tools to promote healthier policies for a better world. But as he said, this is not up to him, but for those people elected to do the job.

The man is super smart. I've watched interviews of him on French TV and he's amongst the most articulate speakers I've heard. Why not let him do his conference in French? He's fairly popular in France, so why not have him participate in a TED talk there?

ce monsieur doit expliquer des choses intéressantes mais je n'y comprend rien. Pourriez vous mettre des sous-titre s'il vous plaît? merci.

Excellent review, best I've heard for a solution.

One of the simplest refutations of that r > g argument was to point out that if the return on capital was such a guaranteed winner, then why is it that hedge funds, mutual funds, and the like have such a hard time capturing that sort of consistent return for their investors? Piketty ignores the risky and sporadic nature of capital investment returns, given that capital can be wiped out in disastrous events, and even if when it's not, it usually results in larger returns after several years of breaking even or losses rather than consistent high returns. I thought his chart for a 5% return on capital prior to 1850 seemed rather dubious. I mean, since he seems to ignore capital-expenses, 10$ worth of capital reinvested in more capital would mean that the cumulative interest would leave more capital in 1850 that has ever existed. If he was really serious about getting capital value out of the hands of capitalists, he could be calling on the rich to consume more. Vastly more. Like, building themselves golden palaces levels of consumption.

What a legend. His book is epic

I've come from 07th September 2021. in order to listen to the theorie economique of piketty. Thanks to his French accent, I feel a bit difficult to understand. (It is difficult to understand what he says coz his speech is speedy) But I bet his capitalisme is fantastic indeed. I wanna applause his hard wørk. I was able to get more interested in his theorie.

I find his accent very charming ♥... Though the topic of the speech is quite important and serious)

He's perfectly understandable and very articulate.

So far the responses can be grouped into criticisms ranging from the superficial (commenting on his accent, rather than the content), the reactionary (commenting why should we pay more taxes), the critical (essentially trying to prove or discredit his work), but almost none discussing possible solutions. In the world of TED watchers and people that leave comments, can no one talk about the issue and put forward solutions rather than trying to simply kill the messenger? The Internet should be the place of conversation on important subjects, not just posting memes, trolling, and watching funny cat videos.

Anyone focused on his accent needs to spend more time @ the nearest metropolitan area near him/her. It says more about themselves than his beautiful French accent.

Do watch this Ted talk by the author himself. Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a 2013 book by French economist Thomas Piketty. It focuses on wealth and income inequality in Europe and the United States since the 18th century. It was initially published in French in August 2013; an English translation by Arthur Goldhammer followed in April 2014.[1] The book's central thesis is that when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth, and this unequal distribution of wealth causes social and economic instability. Piketty proposes a global system of progressive wealth taxes to help reduce inequality and avoid the vast majority of wealth coming under the control of a tiny minority. His ideas can be used in essays related to inclusive development/growth

15:52 here it comes... Handshake with the air? :D

Thomas Piketty opened a lot of people's eyes to their views to modern economic. He is of the best and impactful economist in 21 century.

notes in the long-run, r > g (return on capital is greater than the return on economic growth), which leads to income inequality in the last century, Europe and US have flipped: the US is now much more unequal there are many reasons for this, including unequal access to skills, fast rise in top incomes wealth inequality is always a lot higher than income inequality wealth inequality is still less extreme than 1900 with r > g, initial inequalities are amplified at faster pace there is always some level of dynamism and change (e.g., large families, poor investment decisions) for most of history r > g (g was mostly 0 in agrarian society) r > 0 was necessary for eventual labor diversification and societal evolution both r and g have risen over time long-run g is about 1-2%, we’ve seen unusually high g (3-4%) in post-war 20th century long-run r is about 4-5% r-g delta is caused by technology, savings rate, other factors r > g particularly strong for billionaires; there are scale effects (e.g., portfolio management, financial instruments, tax evasion and lawyers and accountants) main suggestion: increase financial transparency if he were to rewrite the book today, he’d actually conclude that US income inequality higher than he reported

Am I the only one who understands him just fine?

So model the system with a low tax rate then apply/investigate further changes using the data. Does not seem like a bad plan. IMO It's the methodology of gaining great wealth that should be looked at in addition to how that wealth is used. "Excess" Money as a whole should be used to make conditions better(health, transport, environment, education etc) The trouble is in deciding on thresholds and if/ how they should be enforced.

I thought there was going to be an extense and bastly interesting discussion down in the comments, but for the most part people are complaining about his accent. I live in México, have been doing that all my life, and understand him perfectly.

Where was this conference ?

This is pretty simple idea to any oncologist, epidemiologist, thermodynamics physicist, etc. Absent negative feedback inhibitors, any growth mechanism/pathway will eventually consume all available resources until there's nothing left. For a while, the US political economy had these checks in place. For example, prior to the infinite corporations, concentrated wealth was returned to the overall system via the estate tax. Or it was inhibited via a punitive top tax rate (90+% during the post-WW2 era) or by strict enforcement of antitrust law.

Does anybody have links to critiques of Piketty's book?

He has given a valid explanation for a phrase I used in my book, "the rich are always with us". However, his call for financial transparency is also answered in my book. His writing deals with the existing economic reality. My argument is that the Global Economic System is a (man made) social construction of reality. I believe and know that it is possible to design and construct an alternative economic system that has economic justice as its systemic output. Possible but not probable. The politicians would have too little to argue about. It would put a lot of them out of business, including government bureaucracies.

Inequality is a feature not a bug. All stable scalable networks are necessarily Pareto distributions / power law curves. aka scale-free networks.

Thank you Piketty! This is definitely a paper that will change the future! I also had doubts about the disparities in this world. Piketty's book was very difficult for me, but I gained a lot of useful knowledge! Although Japan does not have a progressive capital taxation system, tax-exempt investment quotas have been established to give preferential treatment to people with low incomes. This is definitely the influence of Mr. Piketty. Based on Mr. Piketty's past data and its forecast data, I hope that the future return on capital r will be good, and I would like to do my best to diversify my investment. thanks so much!

Splendid!

I just realised this is what i sound like when i speak french. :(

I love the intellectual humility of this guy. Most academics tend to self promote the superiority of their work due to the current toxic, overcrowded, and competitive condition of academia. But this guy is so careful not to misguide the audience, and he humbly presents the possible shortcomings at the start of the video.

Merci :)

Piketty is my personal hero. He will be such an inspirational speaker if he practices more on his pronunciation/accent to make it easier for us to understand his great thoughts.

8:35 whoa

I would love to have access to captions. My new-mom-brain doesnt have the processing power today.

Do you also "hear" a cut in the video ? 5:13

In nature the old die to makeway for new and young to compete for the position or space previously occupied by the old. Unfortunately in modern economics, old organizations are protected through many regulations (most are unintended consequences). Reserve bank policy is a major life support for dysfunctional businesses that are too large to fail. Also retail banks favor the old and established. All of the above are the direct reasons the economy is unfair. People like Thomas Piketty are seeing the resulting problem and rather than fixing the cause are wanting to take direct action to correct the resulting unfair problems.

-Actually, I think for many no-french speaker it is hard for them to understand some words from his mouth. But it is still a very good presentation.

One very important area of concern in Mr. Piketty's excellent hypotheses relates to the methodology of how a democratic society controls the flagrant abuse in government spending. Witness the insane misappropriation of taxpayer money (waste) in nearly all democratic states. How do we control this abuse? You may reply that we have the power every 4 years to change the governing body, but that is woefully inadequate. This, I believe, is the most important question and reveals the vulnerable underbelly of democracy as it exists today.

He is great English speaker. Many French people his age even do not know simple English words.........

Wow, I can understand this guy simply because I can speak french but man, he has one of the strongest accents I've ever heard, even frenchy parodies don't speak like this

french plus russian accent is really fun to hear... i have read his book and that is what probably helped me understand better...

How do you think the A.I.-revolution would affect these predictions? I'm curious.

Splendit!

And when all the wealth and income ends up at the top and credit is at an end who will be left to be the consumers that drive growth? It will not be a surprise to see the greed at the top actually undermine the system that created the income inequality.

I do see the Insurodollar as a tool for labor to compete with capital within the system.

I am Pakistani and I can understand what he is saying. Some amazing and sound ideas, bravo

Step 1. Have the privilege of your language to be the chosen one in which western society discuss global matters by sheer historical circumstance. Step 2. Display racist inclinations and zero willigness to understand foreign people's ideas because 'it's not comfortable to listen'. Step 3. ??? Step 4. Profit.

Hi does anybody know if is there a version with Spanish subtitles, Im preparing a class and my students dont have a good english level...

Can anyone let me know if he mentioned any influence of a colonial economy in his book?

Guys...apparently someone is attacking this man's French accent (one he can hardly help, he's probably not an English major...he's a man of numbers, and was taught French at an early age). I can understand his accent, and even if I couldn't, closed captionings do exist. The closed captionings here are sensical as well. Stop whining, and start watching (silently, comprehending).

Can someone please explain to me why Piketty predicts that r (rate of return on capital) will rise above 4% in 2050-2100? So far I have seen declining return on capital rate and a quick glance at the 30 years yield curve does not suggest that things will get better.

Financial transparency, that's what I've been thinking about too! (not as much as this guy I'm sure though..)

Piketty also stressed that education (training) and productivity (hardware) are the main factors for growth. Any resources not allocated to these two factors are detrimental to progress.

I'm pretty sure I posted a comment on this video a couple of years ago trying to help explain what Piketty means by "r is greater than g", but it seems the comment got deleted. Anyway, to repeat, as briefly as possible, what Piketty means is investment (that's "r" for "return", as in "return on investment") produces a bigger cash return than labor, or working (that's "g" for "growth", as in "economic growth". Think about having a job and working; you pay your bills and rent etc, then you have some left over -- that's your profit, the money you made which you can now spend on more stuff if you want. In that sense you are "growing" the amount of money you have). That sounds obscure but his point is that if you already have a lot of money and can invest it, over time, you will "do better" (meaning, make more money) than someone who is working and earning some profit. So his argument is that over a long period of time, people who already have money continue to get richer, while those who only work for a living fall behind. The key point is the difference between investing and working: Piketty says investors do better. He says this is why increasing inequality is inevitable. Of course a lot of people disagree with him -- as in the comments here. 🤓

I did a count. Thomas said "you know" 84 times.

There exists a criticism, and I tend to agree, that wealth and capital are not quite the same thing. Capital goods are different from just any other asset and it seems that they are being treated as if they are interchangeable by Piketty.

People focus only on the 80% income tax but he also has other proposals like 2-3% global tax on wealth

Some french people will say that such a bad accent is rare even in France, but I"m not sure. i live in France, my english teacher in school has the exact same accent, and my friends around me too, it's because French people don't listen that much of english oustide of school, and even in school we only work on the grammar aspect, all foreign films are dubbed and like in all countries where the language is spoke by a lot of people around the world, you won't see many bilingual. They are still better at foreign languages than native english people aha (ok it's a joke I don't really know)

I have read his book and I am here to complain about the font. /s

Alt yazıyı Türkçe de yapa bilirmisiniz sevgilier❤

Stop behaving like kids, people, this man did his research and put in lot of effort in his work. Absorb the knowledge and make yourself better, language and accent doesn't as long as it's helping you and making you better.

Genius

He english is basically perfect in terms of grammar and syntax. He has a somehow funny accent but sounds 100% comprehensible to me, and I am Italian.

i understood his accent but I had know idea what any of things he said meant

What is the difference between Wealth and Income ?

This might sound like a dumb question, but why is the rate of return on capital greater than the economic growth? Isn't capital investment what causes economic growth?

Man he has a strong accent.

I love how much Piketty’s content overlaps with Gary Stevenson’s, who is increasingly becoming more popular in 2024

Such cohesive and well-formed thoughts. Even if I don't totally agree, his professionalism is astounding.

2:09 exolanation including education

When people told me french people didn't speak english very well, I thought "they can't be worse than brazilians", this changed my mind.

Excellent

What Thomas Piketty has provided to us is extremely important but significantly flawed in one critical respect: he has never clearly distinguished between the ownership and control of nature (i.e., land, as a primary and passive factor of production) and the goods we produce from nature that are then converted into the capital goods essential to modern production. In the real world, there are rarely gains on the resale of a capital good. Buildings, machinery, technologies all depreciate in exchange value over time. Gains experienced on the sale of land, of natural resource holdings, or of any natural asset with an inelastic supply (e.g., frequencies on the broadcast spectrum or take-off and landing slots at airports) are unearned to individuals and private entities, yet are almost everywhere taxed at much lower rates than income earned producing goods or providing services. In the language of the great French political economist Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, our systems of law, taxation and public policy have created "rentier" dominated economies rather than actual capital-dominated economies. An analogy most people will understand is found in the ownership of residential real estate. A parcel of land improved by a housing structure combines assets with two very distinct characteristics. A housing unit begins to depreciate as soon as construction is completed. Constant maintenance is required. Even so, the resale value of a housing unit is calculated as replacement cost, less depreciation. The land parcel is unique; it cannot be produced; the supply of land parcels available is fixed by nature. As population increases the demand for locations for housing and other uses, the potential rental value of locations increases. The more central the location to business and employment and other public goods and services, the greater will be this potential rental value. Over time, land uses change, although it take a long time for existing structures to be replaced by more intensive (i.e., highest, best) use. Single Family detached homes along a heavily-traveled road will be replaced by multi-storied buildings. Zoning will change to accommodate higher densities, rental and commercial use. However, a good deal of land is held off the market for years or decades as owners anticipate ever-rising values and rarely experience reassessment based on current value. Net of whatever annual tax is imposed, the market will capitalize the imputed location rental value into a potential selling price for the location. The almost universal low effective rate of taxation on location rental values means that for a significant majority of property owners their net worth is comprised of unearned, capitalized land rent. Expand this analogy to commercial, industrial, resource-laden lands and it is clear to see that rentier interests siphon off much of the value generated by productive actors in the economy. And, this is only the tip of the iceberg where rent-seeking gains are concerned. Edward J. Dodson, Director School of Cooperative Individualism www.cooperative-individualism.org

In defense of Americans who have read more than one book, I understood the speaker just fine.

We need subtitles for his speech. I´m Brazilian, and speak English and French.. it doesn´t sound any of them..

In simpler sociological terms, unrestrained capitalism necessarily leads to oligarchy and the end of capitalism, with the inequality ever increasing. The only solution to make capitalism and democracy viable is to introduce high taxation for the wealthy. This solution is however not politically feasible given current dynamics. Lock and load people, we are on course for the return of serfdom, if we are not already in it.

"caused a sensation in early 2014 with his book ... Economic inequality is not new, but it is getting worse, with radical possible impacts." Wow, really? This is absolutely new information, this man is a genious. Watched 7 minutes of this, will never get that back. Waste of fucking time (unless you are highly unaware of your surrounding and is able to understand frenclish..

Well, it makes sense that wealth inequality is drastically greater than income inequality. Wealth = about 6*income. So, if you have a difference of 2 million income, the wealth difference is 12 million.

Long on causes and explanations. Short on solutions.

I´m sorry I get lost constantly. Could TED please put captions so I can read what he´s saying. I´ve watched 3 times now And I can only catch some phrases or words here and there. No continuity.

I keep seeing comments hating on people that can’t understand him, but I’m not seeing the comments from the people that can’t understand him. Guess there were only a few?

why is there 4 links to TED info and not even one to the speakers work???? poor show